Gender and Autonomy versus Decorum: An Analysis of Stereotypes in Dress

Abstract

This article analyzes, from a constitutional and jurisprudential perspective, the legal validity of state restrictions based on women’s appearance and clothing in institutional settings, through the examination of Decision n.º 751-15-EP/21 of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador. The use of “decorum” as an administrative parameter lacks a sufficient legal basis, violates the principle of legality, and reproduces gender stereotypes incompatible with substantive equality, personal autonomy, and the free development of personality. Furthermore, the analysis of the ruling reveals effects that may be interpreted as forms of institutional symbolic violence and allows the measure to be examined as indirect discrimination prohibited by both the Ecuadorian Constitution and the standards of the Inter-American Human Rights System. The study articulates constitutional reasoning with doctrinal contributions on identity, personal autonomy, and judicial de-stereotyping, showing that “decorum” operates as a legal fiction grounded in patriarchal imaginaries that shift moral responsibility onto women for their surroundings and condition their professional legitimacy. Within the framework of Ecuadorian constitutionalism, the article argues that such practices reproduce structural relations of inequality and are incompatible with a rights-based approach that guarantees substantive equality and personal autonomy in professional practice and in access to institutional spaces free from moralizing or stereotyped criteria.